{"id":2241,"date":"2014-09-16T18:12:18","date_gmt":"2014-09-16T18:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/?p=2241"},"modified":"2014-09-16T18:12:18","modified_gmt":"2014-09-16T18:12:18","slug":"what-about-lebanon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/what-about-lebanon\/","title":{"rendered":"What About Lebanon?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tom Brennan
\n\"lebanon\"<\/a>
\nFrom the days of King Hiram and his help in building the Temple to the days when Lebanon was the only Christian-governed nation in the Middle East much history has been made. Now Hezbollah is dominating that land and preparing to strike Israel from the North. Lebanon’s history is one of change and trauma. The news today is dominated by fighting in Iraq and Syria, yet Lebanon remains in turmoil. Lebanon is still a critical factor in the situation in the Middle East and Israel’s uneasy neighbor to the north.<\/p>\n

Lebanon is best known in the Bible as the land ruled by King Hiram. From here the fragrant cedars used in the Temple built by Solomon, the metals and other items to build and decorate the immense structure were fabricated and sent to the King of Israel. David had secured the friendship of this seafaring nation and its king and Solomon reaped the rewards of the security and riches it guaranteed. The Phoenicians before this time were savvy and adventurous merchants and sailors as well.<\/p>\n

Throughout the turmoil that followed the Roman, Persian and Muslim occupations, Lebanon still held to its Christian identity. Lebanon was part of the Ottoman Empire which fell after WW 1. The division of spoils by the winning European Powers gave control of Lebanon into the French mandate. In 1926 a modern Constitution for Lebanon was drawn up which specified a Christian as President, A Sunnite Muslim for Prime Minister.<\/p>\n

Lebanon remained in the French sphere of influence until WW2 when it declared its independence. What followed was a succession of wars, assassinations, civil wars and foreign intervention by other nations and most recently the invasion by The PLO and its stepchild Hezbollah. The civil wars among Christian militias, self-defense forays by the IDF to remove active threats by POL, Hezbollah and splinter groups have led to a fractured country on the edge of another invasion by Muslim extremists, the Caliphate. The Caliphate considers most of that region the Levant and plans to dominate it was the basis for a worldwide jihad.<\/p>\n

Israel and Lebanon have always had an uneven relationship since 1948. In 1967 the government of Lebanon avoided any participation in the Six Day War. Unfortunately the events of following years led to Israeli intervention to combat PLO and Hezbollah’s using southern Lebanon as a base for attacks on Israel. Lebanon still maintains its constitutional recognition of the Christian and Muslim partnership in government. This looks good on paper but in reality the effect is uneven. Up until recently the numbers of Muslim citizens was increasing, upsetting the theoretical balance of population. But in the past few years Christians have been growing in numbers and have maintained their place within the population, thus keeping an uneven and unpredictable ideological position on many events transpiring in the region active.<\/p>\n

With the Caliphate on the march, with their stated intentions of regional and global domination for their ideology, what role will Lebanon play. Will this once ally and partner of Solomon’s Israel work with the Israel of today to resist the extremist threats to both? Let’s pray for the peace of Jerusalem and of Beirut as well.<\/p>\n

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By Tom Brennan From the days of King Hiram and his help in building the Temple to the days when Lebanon was the only Christian-governed nation in the Middle East much history has been made. Now Hezbollah is dominating that land and preparing to strike Israel from the North. Lebanon’s history is one of change more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2242,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[385,135,384,383,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-2241","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israeli-news","8":"tag-hezbollah","9":"tag-israel-news","10":"tag-king-solomon","11":"tag-lebanon","12":"tag-news-from-jerusalem","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2241"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2243,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2241\/revisions\/2243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}